Before 2021, website cookies worked in the background to track users’ browsing activities. For marketing professionals, all the data was invaluable, helping them deliver personalized experiences to customers. From tailored ads to relevant product recommendations, cookies made online shopping more engaging.
But cookies have since come under scrutiny amid rising privacy concerns. You might have noticed more consent banners online asking you to authorize the use of cookies; these are the result of stricter data privacy laws in Europe and California. As we enter a potentially cookieless future, many businesses need to find new ways to provide personalized ecommerce experiences.
Here’s more on the different types of cookies and how to implement cookieless tracking.
What are cookies?
Website cookies are small data files that a web browser stores on a user’s device, assigning a unique ID to the browser. They play a critical role in enhancing the browsing experience, enabling websites to remember user login information, hold shopping carts, and save form inputs. Cookies help power the personalized experience of ads and websites.
But just as bakery cookies come in different flavors, different web cookies serve unique purposes. Here’s how first-party and third-party cookies differ:
First-party cookies
First-party cookies are set directly by the website the user is visiting. The website uses them primarily to improve essential functions on that specific site, like storing shopping carts, login details, and shopping history.
First-party cookies can include:
- User authentication cookies
- Analytics cookies
- Security cookies
- Personalization cookies
- Ecommerce shopping cart cookies
Third-party cookies
Third-party cookies are set by external services or advertisers like social media platforms, companies like Google and Meta, and web analytics firms. These cookies track user behavior and browsing history across multiple websites, enabling cross-site tracking and analytics. Companies commonly use them for targeted advertising.
Examples of third-party cookies include:
- Fraud prevention and security cookies
- Customer profiling cookies
- Affiliate marketing cookies
- Analytics and research cookies
- Social media integration cookies
Third-party cookies have long been commonplace in online advertising and analytics but have come under increasing criticism due to privacy concerns—most notably in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The debate around cookies and user privacy is usually about third-party, not first-party, cookies.
The line between first-party and third-party cookies has blurred, however. For example, Google and Meta now allow advertisers to create first-party versions of their previously third-party cookies. Although Google Chrome announced a phaseout of third-party cookies by 2024, the web browser has since reversed this decision. The definitions and regulations in this area are evolving quickly.
What is cookieless tracking?
Cookieless tracking attempts to understand user behavior and web traffic without relying on traditional browser cookies that store data on a user’s device. Instead, it tracks activity by measuring how users interact at the code level or browser configuration level, or through probabilities.
There are three main benefits to using cookieless tracking:
Privacy-friendly practices
Cookieless tracking respects and protects user privacy; it doesn’t collect any sensitive data like names, device types, email addresses, or IP addresses from users’ browsers. It also addresses user privacy concerns and compliance with regulations like the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
This privacy-friendly practice can boost your business’s reputation and bottom line by building trust with customers. Users are more likely to engage when they see companies handling their data transparently. Seventy-eight percent of consumers report avoiding a particular website due to privacy concerns.
No more banners
International privacy regulations like GDPR and stateside regulations like CCPA require you to inform visitors of exactly how you use cookies on your site and allow them to opt-out.
While transparency is a good thing, omnipresent banners have become a pain, especially on mobile devices. Companies can easily configure cookieless tracking methods to comply with strict privacy laws, eliminating the need for these pesky banners.
Improved data accuracy
Traditional cookie tracking is never entirely accurate due to browser glitches, ad blockers, or withheld consent. Without these, businesses retain more user data in a cookieless world. Some cookieless tracking options can be up to 100% accurate, allowing you to maintain accurate tracking and data collection even as the digital landscape evolves.
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) exemplifies this shift toward improved accuracy. Designed for a cookieless environment, it emphasizes first-party data collection from user interactions and event-based tracking.
Cookieless tracking methods to collect data
As regulations tighten and browser restrictions grow, privacy-focused alternatives are replacing third-party cookies. The best form of cookieless tracking depends on your goals. Here are three main types of cookieless tracking to consider:
Server-side tracking
Server-side tracking lets you precisely monitor user actions on your website and is the most common form of cookieless tracking. Instead of embedding code into the user’s browser, server-side tracking captures actions and triggers an event, which it sends directly to the website’s server. There, the server processes the data and assigns each action a unique server-generated ID, which it then forwards to marketing and analytics platforms.
Popular analytics tools, like Google Tag Manager and Segment, support both cookie-based and server-side tracking. Because server-side tracking happens entirely on the website’s server, it gives website owners complete control over their own data collection and usage.
Probabilistic tracking
Probabilistic tracking is a cookieless approach that focuses on overall ad performance rather than individual user interactions. It uses machine learning and statistics to identify likelihoods and correlations between ad performance and revenue. It relies on patterns rather than individual identifiers, which helps maintain user privacy.
In other words, probabilistic tracking evaluates factors like device type, location, browsing patterns, and time of interaction to create non-identifiable behavior “profiles,” which allows the ad platform to estimate effectiveness without harvesting personal details. For example, Meta Ads uses a combination of cookies and probabilistic tracking in its attribution models without large-scale data collection.
Browser/fingerprint tracking
Fingerprinting is a cookieless tracking method that collects information about the device and browser without storing anything on the device. It uses minor details—screen resolution, operating system, unique IP addresses, fonts, time zone information, and hardware specifications—to build a unique “digital fingerprint” and make inferences based on these configurations.
This cookieless tracking solution creates a unique identifier—called a persistent element—that enables tracking without direct data storage on the user’s computer or device. Companies can use this persistent element for ad targeting without third-party cookies. And because fingerprinting is based on characteristics, clearing cookies and using incognito mode doesn’t affect its tracking ability.
Cookieless tracking FAQ
Is cookieless tracking legal?
Cookieless tracking is legal and often supports easier compliance with data privacy laws like GDPR and CCPA because it doesn’t directly identify people. It relies on an anonymized IP address, fingerprinting, and server-side data collection rather than personally identifiable information like traditional cookie-based tracking.
Can you track without cookies?
You can track website analytics without cookies using server-side, probabilistic, and browser/fingerprint tracking methods. By making inferences based on the result rather than the action, cookieless tracking provides insight into your users’ web activity and website performance while remaining compliant with privacy regulations.
Are there cookieless tracking tools available?
There are many cookieless tracking tools for tracking user behavior and ad performance, including Google Analytics 4, Adobe Analytics, Mixpanel, Segment, Heap, Matomo, and Fathom Analytics.
